Memory Lane
by drakonlily
Summary: Smecker has some self realizations and reflections.


Memory Lane

You know, there's something about the aftermath of major decisions that makes me stop and think about the choices I've made in the past. For some people that means holing up in their basement or attic with a bottle of cheep hootch and their photos and memories. Maybe it also means some extremely awkward phone calls to people who they haven't talked to in more than eight years.

It makes me go to a dingy bar and pick up something young and queerer than a tree full of fucking peacocks to take home and turn out. I'm not meant for relationships; too much effort and I like to focus on my work. Relationships tend to want to cuddle and become distractions from the important things in my life.

It makes for interestingly awkward phone calls as well, I suppose. So I'm not much different than most people in that regard. I take my cigarettes to the bar and drink down scotch or expensive things that burn the throat like the first time I smoked instead of hiding away with the cheap shit. I lose myself in someone whose name I won't care to remember instead of a box of memories that I'd rather forget. It boils down to drinking in a dark corner, all the same.

There's something else that I realize as the smoke curls about my fingers from my cigarette, arching like the back of that last young peacock I took to a hotel room. I want to focus. I need the dull of alcohol to numb those places of my brain that don't want to dwell on the wrongs I've allowed to happen.

Memories are just like a box of photographs. You know that the things in there are forlorn and perhaps better forgotten. But damnit to fucking hell... you just can't throw some things away. The memory of the first child I saw dead is burned into my mind as surely as the image of the person you first kissed is buried in your old shoebox. That image pounds itself into my brain and like a flipbook more memories of the dead follow that poor little girl.

How easy it is for Conner and Murphy. They have no idea what it's like to just let the evil walk. They realized that they couldn't walk away and instead of becoming cops, or detectives, or even dumber, a fucking FBI agent, they took the law into their own hands. They did the work of God in a way that God didn't use to find so abhorrent.

That is what burned me so much. If you live your life like I had lived mine, you'd understand. You spend your life playing by the rules like a good little file jockey. You do the fucking hat dance and feed some half witted jury all the evidence. Fuck, there are times I nearly showed them the goddamn gun being fired. And yet...how did they say it?

Oh yeah, "money talks and bullshit walks".

And that bullshit walked on me so much that I wanted to pull my hair out. I could see it. I walk into a crime scene and I see what went down. It's there, on the carpet, all over the wall and pooling at the bottom of a staircase. It's there in the places of the wall that were removed or the carpet that was perfectly cut with a boxknife. Why are people so idiotic that they need sockpuppets to know a criminal?

Maybe I should have started giving them twisty mustaches, capes, top hats and use a woman tied to the railroad tracks as evidence? Obvious enough for you, King Bonehead?

It was at that time of my life I met the Conner and Murphy. At first it was just dead mobsters. Quiet city Boston was due for a cleaning or a scuffle. The Russians, the Italians, they only get along in close quarters for so long. It was nothing to put together the pieces and begin to realize what I was dealing with. I'm nothing if good at my job. Before I saw those two I knew what to expect. I knew what was going to happen the moment they swaggered their tight little asses into that sorry excuse for a police station. They were the start of my life's purpose.

Don't think that I'm swayed by pretty eyes, neck tattoos and tee-shirts that pull just so over a chest. I can get that anytime I feel like it. There was something set behind their eyes. Something that told me that they were unafraid to do what I knew needed to be done.

I'm not the sort to let my heart lead me. I've always been by the book. Some may say flamboyant, and I'll give them that. All us queers have our fairy moments, and if they're denying it they're looking for Christmas presents. But I've always done my job and done it well. The flair for the dramatic just helps me get into a form of character; into the mindset of a criminal when I'm a law abiding citizen.

Hell, I didn't even have sex until I was eighteen. And if you can believe it, it was with a girl. Wet blanket of a thing with fish lips. Gave a great blowjob though. Too bad her brother did it better. You know, with a little purr in his throat and big blue eyes that looked up at you. Do all women not make eye contact when blowing someone? My mind's wandering... the brandy's getting to me.

I gave up fronting for straight earlier than most of my peers. Again, I just put two and two together and enjoyed myself. Playing with gender gave me the opportunity to get into someone else's mind. That's what drag really was to me. Becoming a woman, becoming something completely different than I am and knowing it better than it knew itself. It's all a mind game, gender play. It was the first profiling that I'd ever done.

And then, when the bartender calls for a last call it all comes together for me. I've been a drag queen; I understand the other. I've been a bottom; I understand how to take the pain. I've been a top and from the look of the little shit across the bar I'm going to be one again tonight. I've presented the evidence to clowns who thought they were the judge and jury.

Fuck the judge and jury. I'm skipping straight to the executioner.


End file.
